[JURIST] The judges of the Constitutional Court of South Africa [official website] have filed a complaint [text, DOC] with the country's judicial disciplinary body, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) [backgrounder, DOC], alleging that the top judge in the Cape High Court unconstitutionally attempting to influence Constitutional Court judges in a
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[JURIST] A proposed anti-terror bill [BBC backgrounder] that would allow British law enforcement authorities to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days [JURIST news archive] should not be passed as it could set a bad precedent for other countries, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights
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[JURIST] A federal judge in the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website] Monday sentenced leading class-action securities lawyer Melvyn Weiss [JURIST news archive] to 30 months in prison and ordered him to pay over $10 million in fines and forfeitures. The former Milberg Weiss partner
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[JURIST] The UN's new Universal Periodic Review [UN backgrounder, PDF] has made great strides in protecting human rights but still has far to go, departing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour [official profile] said in her last address [text; recorded video] to the UN Human Rights Council [official
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[JURIST] Australian advocacy group International Criminal Court Action (ICCACTION) [official website] sent a brief [text] to the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] Friday requesting charges be laid against former Australian Prime Minister John Howard for war crimes in connection with his deployment of Australian troops to support the 2003
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[JURIST] A federal judge in California subpoenaed a Washington Times reporter Saturday, ordering him to reveal the government sources he used for a 2006 story about a Chinese spy ring. Defense and national security reporter William Gertz [personal profile] cited unnamed US government sources in a May 2006 story [text],
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[JURIST] Several Russian gay rights activists were arrested by police in Moscow Sunday for holding events commemorating the 1993 law that put an end to government prosecution for homosexual activity in Russia. For the third consecutive year, Moscow Pride [advocacy website] held events around the city to elude officials attempting
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[JURIST] US federal authorities are prosecuting significantly more illegal immigrants than in past years, at least partly because of a 2005 zero-tolerance initiative allowing agents to charge almost all illegal immigrants with minor crimes, according to a report [text; press release] released May 22 by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access
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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] handed down three decisions Monday, including United States v. Santos [Duke Law backgrounder; JURIST report], where the Court held 7-2 that the term "proceeds" in a federal money laundering statute [text] means "profits" and not "receipts." Santos had successfully collaterally
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[JURIST] The US has held terror detainees on roving prison ships [press release] in an effort to hide them from media scrutiny and legal watchdogs, UK prison rights group Reprieve [advocacy website] alleged Monday. According to Reprieve, it is suspected that the USS Bataan, the USS Peleliu [official websites] and
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[JURIST] An Iranian court has sentenced [Change for Equality press release] a man to one year in prison after police arrested him last year for collecting signatures in a Tehran park in support of women's rights, his lawyer said Sunday. Amir Yaghoub-Ali [Amnesty International profile], a twenty-two year-old student, was
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[JURIST] Swiss voters Sunday rejected by roughly 64-36 percent [provisional official results, in German] a referendum initiative [question text, in German; information page, in German] that would have allowed municipalities control over granting Swiss passports without the possibility of appeal for applicants. The Swiss Supreme Court found in 2003 that
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